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August 02, 2015

If you're a fan club member, you know what this means! It's the annual celebration of Splitcoaststamper's fan club, which started yesterday! Splitcoastamper's fan club members get access to exclusive galleries by the Dirty Dozen, SCS's exclusive design team, of which I am a proud alumni! I was one of the first Dirty Dozen back in 2004 (holy cow, that's 11 years ago!!!) and have the proud distinction of being the longest-serving member. Every year, I try to participate as a challenge hostess for Dare to Get Dirty because it's just a ton of fun! The whole week is filled with fun challenges and there are prizes too!

I can't give you the details of my challenge, as they are for members only! But I can show you the card I created for my challenge! Lookie:

I recently acquired a few new images with a knitting theme. This stamp is Close Knit by Pure Innocence through My Favorite Things. I created the greeting banner using the new Banner Triple punch from Stampin' Up! I colored the image nicely with Copic markers.

I made this right when the decision on marriage equality went through, so I decided to make the scarf she was knitting a rainbow scarf!

The embossing folder is called Cable Knit and is from Taylored Expressions. Because the image was so large and I wanted the emphasis to stay on it, I did not add much in the way of embellishments.

July 28, 2015

When I saw this stamp, I had to have it. Had to. Because it's freakin' cute.

I did this a WHILE ago. I don't know why I've held onto it so long, but with everyone home for the summer, it seems like something is happening EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN' day. And then I got a nasty virus from my husband and was down with that for something like 2 weeks. I used up all my sick time, and so all the time I had where I was feeling moderately well enough were spent working. Ugh.

ANYWAY, here 'tis:

GOJUS! (YILM!)

I embossed the black ink really quickly,then watercolored with the ink pads.

I used the new brick embossing folder which I stamped with spatters from Gorgeous Grunge.

You can buy everything I used to make this card by clicking on any photo below to go to my webstore:

July 13, 2015

I had the really good fortune of selling of some previous crafting assets, giving my some cashola to spend.

I'll be honest. I do spend most of my money with Stampin' Up! They are what pays the bills after all. But the new catalog definitely has a shortage on images that can be colored and having gotten a taste for coloring with alcohol markers with the advent of Blendabilities, only to have those all be discontinued, leading me to decide to take advantage of the offer to return all the ones I bought...well, a girl likes to color after all, and once you use alcohol markers it's really HARD to go back to coloring with the regular ones. And I do still have a few Copics, certainly not as many as some, but when it comes to coloring, I don't rely as much on having all the colors as using the ones I have in a painterly sort of way. I can color and gradate with the best of them, but mostly I like coloring the way you will see in this card I am about to show.

ANYWAY, I was looking for knitting-related stamps in particular, but when I saw this set of stamps on the Unity Stamps site by Phyllis Harris, I just fell in love with the image and had to have it. Lookie:

GOJUS! (YILM) After I got done coloring it, I was very intimidated by how I was going to put this on a card that was suitably embellished without going overboard. I'm not a fan of sticking scads of Prima flowers all over a card and using a lot of really ornate die cuts to frame images. I needed something that would complement the image without overwhelming it. Using the retired cloud embossing folder was something I thought of immediately, but it seemed a little bit blah and sad when I embossed some Wisteria Wonder cardstock. I then had the brain wave of using vellum, and just letting the WIsteria mat show through that instead of putting it directly under the image on top of the vellum.

Instead of sticking to carefully gradated colors, I like to use the contrasting color on the color wheel to create some of the shadows. I find that makes the colors pop. You can see where I did this on the dress. I used a bit of yellow in the shadows. This makes the purple that isn't shaded look brighter. This method of coloring doesn't look as "safe" and looks more painterly.

I don't know if you can see, but I used a white gel pen and Sakura Stardust pen to highlight the rain, making it glisten nicely. And I used the white gel pen as well to create ripples and rain drop splashes in the puddle. I love the pop of red for the shoes, and I then used a Poppy Parade marker to put in the tiny polka dots on the dress to match her shoes.

In the background, I pressed the tip of the colorless blender into the marker strokes to create splotches. This made it look more wet and enhanced the image of the rain.

This is not the only set I bought from Unity. I really love Phyllis Harris' designs and will have another set to show you at some point.

July 11, 2015

Well, no I'm really not. This set is AWESOME. When you see what I did with it, it's going to the top of your list, it really is. So, really I'm doing you a favor, making it easier for you to figure out what to order, hopefully from me.....

Sorry, I just got lost in a daydream of online orders pouring in, my sales zooming into 6 digits, and a ticker tape parade, and, and...

ANYWAY, I take it you want to see what I'm talkin' 'bout, right? Hee hee...okay.

GOJUS!!!! (YILM!) This was the card that brought me out of my slump. It took a WEEK to make the decisions of how to use the butterfly piece I created within only an hour. It was SO beautiful I didn't want to screw it up. I moved it around, layered it on a ton of colors, and finally I just decided it was too big for an A2-sized card. I went with a 5-1/4" square card instead. That allowed me to add some embellishment with the washi tape and ribbon and still allow the butterfly piece to shine.

I didn't want to cover up these beauties, so I went with the new Greetings Thinlit dies. I went to cut it out of gold brushed card stock and I realized we don't CARRY that anymore! So I went with the gold foil paper, and I actually like the little bit of shine with it.

As I have said before, you get the best effect with this set by stamping off since the stipple texture of the stamps soaks up a lot of ink, though for the outlines on some of the butterflies I did use full-strength ink. I varied each one but used the same color palette, the palette from the Bohemian DSP.

I echoed the gold from the greeting die cut and just added my signature two rhinestones up in the corner to keep the visual triangle going.

You can buy everything I used to make this card by clicking on any photo below.

July 10, 2015

This is a very simple sketch, and I decided to turn to a set that I haven't gotten along well with yet, and that is the new Ronald McDonald set, Sprinkles of Life. I did make one card that I liked with it, but every time I've tried to play with it since I've ended up screaming and throwing everything away. It's a strongly graphic set and I needed something as strongly graphic to do with it. I also grabbed the Pretty Petals DSP paper stack because I love the colors and the prints from there.

The hardest part, honestly, was finding the embellishments, especially the focal one up in the corner. Finding something that wouldn't overwhelm the main image was not easy. But I'm happy with what I've done!

Lookie:

GOJUS! (YILM!) I love the strong punch of black with the ivory and these softer colors.

The matching punch for the tree images makes using this set a snap. I love all the different prints I used together on this card (4 in all). By going with a quilted look, they all work together nicely.

The washi tape punch was a nice way to do my greeting. Normally, I would have put this down in the right hand corner, but I like it better here. The expanse of the tiny black dots/ivory print needs to show to make the pattern read well.

And I love this little clip made with the Project Life Paper Clips Thinlits.

You'll be able to see all of our creations and post one of your own by visiting the Fab Friday blog. You can also visit the other DT members' blogs and see what they've done with this challenge:

July 03, 2015

Hey everyone. I haven't been posting much. Mostly because my stamping mojo just curled up and died. I couldn't get any kind of mojo flowing except for knitting. Which has been gone for YEARS. Not since 2009 have I really knit very much. I have two nieces, though, that have had or are about to have babies, so I thought why not knit a sweater for both of them? And I was off. Suddenly, knitting was all I could think about. I started that sweater, and I started another pair of socks, and then I finished a pair of socks that I had started in 2003. Think about that. Would you finish a stamping project that old? No, you would not. That project would have been filed in the circular file a long time ago. But knitters are tenacious people.

In addition, I recently decided to sell some of my hoarded spinning and weaving magazines. I can hear you, "Magazines? Who buys old magazines?" Well, no one is really that interested in old stamping magazines or scrapbooking magazines. Those I learned you might as well give away or take to your local school that has a bin for recycling them. But spinning, weaving, and knitting magazines all have patterns. And if the yarn is no longer available (like a stamp might be) then there is always another yarn you can substitute.

In addition, people who work with fiber have that Complete Collection Syndrome (we have it too...for ink colors or ribbon, etc). If they have been collecting a magazine, they like to fill in the gaps. So even though my husband told me long ago that I should throw those magazines away, I kept them. I knew that even if I never wanted to open them again, I could sell them. And that's just what I did. I sold ALL the spinning and weaving magazines (over 200) within a week of listing them on Ravelry. So I had some money in my Paypal account again!

I'm happy to say I did not buy a bunch of yarn. I did buy ONE skein of yarn and a few patterns. After all, I still have ALL the yarn I bought in the height of my most-fruitful knitting years, from 1992 through 2005 or so.This is (cough) a LOT of yarn. My husband wants me to get rid of that too. But when the zombie apocalypse comes, I will be ALL SET.

However, despite the lack of stamping mojo, last night I had what can only be described as a stamp shopping jag. And it wasn't through Stampin' Up! It was through (GASP!) other companies!

You see, I decided after I signed up for a bunch of knitting groups on Facebook that since knitters like to buy lots of things that are knitting related, I should make some cards for my Etsy shop for them. This would require knitting-related stamps and dies and embossing folders. These are not easy to find, BTW. SU! has nothing knitting related right now. I know. I have bought every knitting-related set that they have put out since becoming a demonstrator (all of two sets). I have a few knitting stamps from other companies,but I decided I needed MORE knitting stamps.

Thus, the big knitting stamp web hop began. I searched through all kinds of stamp company sites and managed to find a way of spending about $100 of my magazine money. I have one company I can't complete my purchase through because they don't seem to remember me, my password doesn't work, and the feature used to reset it doesn't work. So I'm patiently waiting for them to get back to me. Because I need those things in my shopping cart, darn it!

Yes, I'm diseased. I have the "I want it now!" disease, or what I like to call Veruca Salt disease, "Dont' care how, I WANT IT NOW!" Remember when we used to order things by filling out a form, enclosing a check, sending it off in the mail, then patiently waiting for it to come, sometimes more than a month later? Ha! We couldn't do that now without having a stroke. I know I couldn't, anyway. The first time I shopped online I remember quite clearly. It was 1999, I had just had a baby, and Emily's 2nd birthday was coming up in days. I had no energy, no desire to go to the mall and find things, and so I went on EToys.com (long defunct) and bought all of her birthday presents. It was so darned easy. And I've never looked back.

So now that I've spent some of my magazine money, I guess now I should really start stamping things. The funny thing is that it seemed to make me feel more stampy, more crafty, knowing that new goodies are coming my way. I just have to place another order through Stampin' Up! to get some of the new stamps in the catalog that I passed up the last time to get the new accessories, right?

In the meantime, I do have a card I made before the mojo went. Yes, it's another card with You've Got This, but I think you'll like it. Lookie:

GOJUS!!! (YILM!) I wanted to play with masking and sponging and creating a sponged background so I masked off a square on Whisper White.

I kept adding color until I got a gradient I liked. I then spritzed water on top and also used the speckle stamp from Gorgeous Grunge to add some speckles, stamping off the ink first so it wouldn't be hella dark. After it all dried, I stamped the flower and greeting, then added the white highlights to the stamens of the flower with the white gel pen.

The dotted lace trim is the perfect accent. If you are having trouble getting your cut ends to look nice, use a pair of pinking shears. It makes for the perfect trim.

You can buy anything I used to make this card by clicking on any of the photos below:

June 26, 2015

These are the 2015-17 In Colors. I can't say I love them all together, but we had the choice of using all or some, and I went for some. I decided I would use my Watercolor Wings set again, mostly because I was so focused on buying accessories out of the new catalog that I didn't buy all that many stamps.

The problem with these colors is that they are very brightly saturated and my ink pads are new and very wet. I found that stamping off on everything except the body of the butterfly and the greeting gave me the look I needed.

Along with the Watercolor Wings set, I grabbed my old faithful, Gorgeous Grunge, and got to work.

Lookie:

GOJUS! (YILM!) I decided to leave both greens out of the mix and stay in the warm end of the spectrum.

I love the softer look I got with stamping off!

I tried different ribbon and some washi tape and in the end, all I needed was a little bling to finish.

The card base is the new heavy-weight Whisper White and it is FAB. Very smooth, but the perfect weight for card bases.

You'll be able to see all of our creations and post one of your own by visiting the Fab Friday blog. You can also visit the other DT members' blogs and see what they've done with this challenge:

June 12, 2015

I liked this sketch. I wondered about the scalloped square, since our punch has retired, but I figured I could work around it. I had some new papers and stamps I was itching to try. Everything went pretty well until the embellishment phase, but I eventually figured out what it needed.

Lookie:

GOJUS! It's a ton of fun to play with the Watercolor Wings, trying out different combinations of colors. I knew, though, that I wanted to use the Pretty Petals DSP paper stack. The new small paper stacks in the new catalog are now 6 x 6 instead of 4 x 6, a much easier size to work with. There are some awesomely pretty papers in this stack!

Instead of the scalloped square, I used the Label Bracket punch. I punched it a second time, cut the punched piece into 4 pieces diagonally, then mounted each piece behind the Calypso Coral piece to frame it up. The button with the new gold thread from the new catalog adds a beautiful finishing touch. It's interesting how the Mint Macaron in this paper stack looks more blue, almost like a slightly greener Baja Blue. The way color interacts has always been fascinating to me.

You'll be able to see all of our creations and post one of your own by visiting the Fab Friday blog. You can also visit the other DT members' blogs and see what they've done with this challenge:

June 10, 2015

I've got another card to show you with this set. I'm busy trying to squeeze out some more cards with my new catalog schtuff AND I have even more coming on Friday, so I will be spending some serious time this weekend stamping...when I'm not working that is. Ugh.

ANYWAY, here's this card that I made. Lookie:

GOJUS! (YILM!) The fun thing about this set is that you can just simply stamp it or you can do technique-y things with it. More views:

When I first saw it, I wasn't sure I would like this lace trim, but it ties into bows SO nicely that now I officially approve of it. I know that makes you want to place an order for it immediately, right? LOL.

You can see that I put a small rhinestone in the center of the In Color Blossom Accent. I can't say I'm really crazy about those, something about the plastickyness of them, but this one is perfect for right where it is.